Mr. Mattie Quinn:

I am a retired person and part of the Loughrea concerned citizens group. Ms Cronin has outlined why we are concerned and what our concerns are. I will go through some slides to illustrate the points she made. Slide 2 outlines the objectives of our concern group. These have been developed since we first got together around this time last year. The first is reopening the centre. It is a state-of-the-art, purpose-built centre. We want it reopened for the benefit of the older people in the community. When it is open, we want to ensure they have the facilities and services they formerly had in the centre which the HSE is trying to close. Members will see the significance of that in a moment. The third thing is to ask the HSE to pause the current plans whereby they want to repurpose an old workhouse building. It was the kitchen of the workhouse built in 1841. To give the committee an idea of how dark it is, there are 15 chandelier-type lights in the ceiling - not posh ones, now. Each has three bulbs. If it takes 45 bulbs to light this building, that will give the committee a fair idea of what we are talking about. We will see that in a moment. Finally, HIQA has certain space requirements for the community nursing unit. We want them to do it through an alternative option instead of using the Seven Springs day centre to resolve their space issues, not ours.

I will move on to the next slide. It is very hard to describe some of these things but visually we can get there a lot better. On the left is a photograph of the Seven Springs day centre. I draw the committee's attention to the corner nearest, where there are six windows, three on one side and three on the other. On the right we see the other building for which they propose somewhere in the region of €1 million to upgrade it. A grey stone area is highlighted in the yellow lines. Those four windows are the windows of the kitchen, which they propose to make a day room out of.

On the next slide there is a photograph of Loughrea lake, which is the view looking out the six windows of the Seven Springs building. Unfortunately, the quality of the picture is not as good as it should be. If someone was looking out the four windows of the other building, what they would see is depicted on the right hand side of the slide. The view of the lake might just be a little white spot between the two prefab-type buildings. It is about a metre. That is the view of the lake in comparison to the one on the left hand side of the slide. This time of the year people would not see anything because the trees have all got leaves. The bottom photograph on the right hand side shows the view out the back of this proposed day room. It nearly speaks for itself. It is fairly obvious, comparing the images on the left and the right, that this is not progress. However, they are hell-bent on doing this thing.

The next slide provides a space comparison. We were informed by the HSE that the repurposed building would be larger than the existing building. We looked up our maps on so on. On the left of the slide is the Seven Springs centre where the day room is 132 sq. m. I want to revise that figure because a wall appeared there since we checked this thing out meaning we have to take 12 sq. m. off leaving 120 sq. m. On the right of the slide is a sketch of what is proposed. We cannot copy the architect's plans for copyright reasons and so on. The day room there is 115 sq. m. We were told the new place was going to be bigger. The assisted shower and the manager's office are also marked on the plan for the proposed building. Above that are two areas of office space of 149 sq. m. I do not know what they need 149 sq. m. of office space for in a day centre. This is in the tender document; this is what people have tendered for.

Next is one of our most important slides, providing a services comparison. The left column lists the services and facilities that were available in the Seven Springs centre: assisted shower, hairdressing, smoking room, clinical room, library, computer room, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, chiropody, an oratory or prayer room, a day and dining room, a storage area and toilet facilities. The right hand column is based on the previous slide we showed the committee, which indicates what is proposed. Did we see any of those facilities on that slide? The only facilities included are the nurse manager's office, the assisted shower room and the day dining room. Those people Ms Cronin spoke about are expected to move into that building. This was supposed to be a bigger building and we were assured, hand on heart, that the same facilities would be available in the new building. It does not look like it. In case those office spaces were supposed to be converted, I presume if someone is tendering for a job, he or she wants to see the whole job. They are not going to say to the contractors to throw in a few rooms there when they are finished. That is what is on offer. The committee can see why we are concerned.

The next slide provides an aerial view of the complex. The two L-shaped buildings are the nursing unit and over on the right is the day centre. In between, there is a little link, which is a glazed corridor between the two buildings. Members might see the word "link" towards the top right corner. That is the drop-off point for people to go to the day centre. They have to walk 4 m or 5 m at most to get in there. Under the new arrangement., the drop-off point would be over where the red block is marked. They would have to walk in and across the front of the building to get it, possible 15 m or so. That might not sound like a lot but for an elderly person or someone in a wheelchair, 15 m is a hell of long way to have to travel, particularly if it is a wet, windy day blowing in.

Part of the facilities on offer was a cooked meal and afternoon tea for the residents. The kitchen for the whole complex is under the red arrow marked on the right.

The food will have to be taken out the side door, up along the road and across the yellow line. I am not sure how that is going to be done, and I wonder what will happen on a really wet day. What will happen if the ground is frosty or if there is snow or whatever? These are the logistics proposed.

I will give a little bit of background on this. In 1979, as Ms Cronin has said, the original day centre was funded by the Topping Trust to the tune of £17,000, as it was then, which I believe is currently the equivalent of about €180,000. The HSE picked up the rest. Members will notice the red line around the community nursing unit but nothing around the day centre. Part of that was because HIQA had no role with regard to day centres, as far as we know, only nursing units. In 2017 or 2019, during re-registration, members will notice that the red line suddenly went right around the centre. The reason I said "2017 or 2019" is because we have two documents, one of which says that it was done in 2017, and another very recent one that says it was done in 2019. We do not know which is correct, because this is an internal thing that goes on but certainly, it is symptomatic of some of the things that go on in the HSE.

In 2019-20, the regulations of the Health Act 2007 and the national standards for residential care settings for older people in Ireland, which came into effect on 1 July 2016, required more space in the community nursing unit. While there might be a statutory reason as to why so many square metres are required per person, the point is that the unit has been working at about 75% capacity for months. There are 25 empty beds in the place on average. Of the 75% of beds that are occupied, anything from one third to a half of those never leave their rooms, for physical and maybe psychological reasons. I am not sure where the necessity for space is, if that number of people are not even circulating. I know it is a statutory thing but it is where bureaucracy needs to match practical common sense.

To solve this problem in 2020, four options were agreed with HIQA and the HSE, including an option to build an extension. In October 2021 and in 2022, Covid-19 pandemic restrictions were being lifted but there was no sign of anything happening. People were wondering when the day centre was going to open. As Covid-19 was now over, they wondered why it was not opening. Nobody knew about the redesignation. The HSE kept answering, "Well, it is going to open in two weeks", or "it will be another three weeks", or "it will be two months", and so on. Then suddenly, the bombshell dropped, that it was not going to open at all. This left the older people devastated. They were looking forward to this so much after the Covid-19 lockdown, and that they were going to get an opportunity to meet again and do what they were doing. Instead, they found that this thing was closed down, even though they were misled and given false expectations for all of that time. I think it is absolutely cruel and callous to behave like this.

In 2022, the HSE came up with the idea that it would open Seven Springs one day per week. It claimed that it got a derogation from HIQA. What puzzled a lot of people is that if it can work on one day per week, on Wednesday, how come there are not space, crowding or dining issues but it cannot open Monday, Tuesday or Thursday and there is no opening at all on a Friday. It is misleading because the HSE is saying that it is open on one day per week. It is open in the sense that it is half open, because the number of people allowed in is 14. Normally there would be between 26 and 28 there. The plan the HSE came up with was to pay for a conference room in a local hotel to host the attendees. By the way, we asked how much this cost, and they could not tell us due to commercial sensitivity. It is something that is very popular around these rooms at the moment. I believe we have heard that in another context.

I want to return, for a moment, to the four options. One of these options was to build an extension. The HSE went away to look at this after the agreement with HIQA, and then it turned down the four options itself. It was not going to use them at all. The reason given for the extension not going ahead was that the ground was not topographically suitable. We asked for that report. We wanted to see why it was not suitable. We were looking from February until about a month ago to get a response. This report was everywhere. It was with the Minister, with HSE estates and you name it. Eventually, we got it; a report that was done in 2008. Remember, this was supposed to be done in February 2023. We got the one that was done in 2008. While it still might be relevant in certain situations, it is not the one the HSE said it was going to do. We also got a sketch from some architects under freedom of information legislation. There was a sketch of some kind of a veranda in front of the nursing unit, but the document said that there was no other document in the building relevant to that location. Here we were being told, for all this time, that this document was here, there and everywhere, and it never existed. It was never done. This is another example of the kind of way we were being dealt with. It is extraordinary and that is why we are so determined. In 2003-----